Posts Tagged ‘trump agenda’

If the Trump White House had let it be known a couple of months ago that it was working with the Kremlin to schedule a summit meeting between the two presidents, all hell would have broken loose in the Washington Beltway. But that isn’t happening. There is an eerie calm in Washington, as if Trump’s detractors have run out of ammunition.

Trump appears intent on undermining the whole US-led post-war, or rather post-1971, order. Here Hugo Salinas Price shows that the ever-growing US trade deficit is a necessary component of that order. It feeds US government spending and ensures the flow of dollar into the global system. Logically, the US must move from being the consumer of last resort to being once again a productive economy, another professed Trump goal.

Way back in 1995, when Mexico was in the throes of another financial crisis, I figured out the problem of the existing world’s monetary system, based on the paper dollar as the fundamental currency of the world.

There seem to be two factions inside the US ruling class: one which favours a permanent Cold War and the Trump faction. Trump has now prevailed and duly moved to end the Cold War. He has thus cleared the way for constructive engagement with China. As China is America’s largest creditor and provider of consumer goods it is only logical that the US should try to reach an agreement with her. This not about free trade but free movement of capital and the reinvestment of US debt in means of production inside the US thus eliminating the US trade deficit. This would also enable the creation of a new global currency system. Obviously, there is opposition to such an outcome inside the US elite but apart from a prolonged paralysis and humiliating decline the only other option is a war with China. Many on the left, in particular, seem to regard this as an inevitability. However, the USA has no history of taking a major power head on and the military balance is no longer favourable if it ever was. Furthermore, Trump has already created facts on the ground which gravitate against such a scenario. He has undermined the so-called special relationship with the UK, always a willing partner in any recklessness. He has also undermined the whole notion of the “free world” as the West likes to style itself and, thus, the possibility of a coalition of the willing. For all the contrast in style and ideological posture, there is some continuity from the Obama presidency. Obama undoubtedly sought detente with Russia but his deal was killed stone dead by factions within the US military when they attacked the Syrian army. A similar derailment of the Trump deal cannot be ruled out but he has gone to great lengths to guard his back: he has spent recklessly on the military and, unlike Obama, he has appeased the Israeli lobby. He also appears to have brought on board those within the military who particularly fear reckless overseas engagements.

While most of the liberal intelligentsia either ignore the summit or dismiss it as a stunt, the centre-left New York Times simply despairs at what it sees as a Trump surrender- as if it was not an American surrender that was required after decades of demonising and isolating North Korea.

It sure looks as if President Trump was hoodwinked in Singapore. Trump made a huge concession — the suspension of military exercises with South Korea. That’s on top of the broader concession of the summit meeting itself, security guarantees he gave North Korea and the legitimacy that the summit provides his counterpart, Kim Jong-un.

Some statesmen by their sheer force of personality and unorthodox ways of politicking arouse disdain among onlookers. US President Donald is perhaps the most famous figure of that kind in world politics today.

Like this:

“A secret plan to break up the West would also have the United States looking for new allies to replace the discarded ones. The most obvious would be Russia”

The most obvious would be China. Trump wants the factories back home which means in practice Chinese inward investment: China would invest directly into the USA rather than sell directly. This makes sense of Trump’s tariffs which would otherwise just be destructive. It’s true that the USA has a tradition of developing industry behind tariff barriers but that requires investment. At the end of the 19th century that came largely from Britain: now it can only come from China. At the same time, if the peace process with North Korea is successful China will come out in good light facilitating the above process. Trump has turned the world upside down. Can he put it together again?

The alliance between the United States and Western Europe has accomplished great things. It won two world wars in the first half of the 20th century. Then it expanded to include its former enemies and went on to win the Cold War, help spread democracy and build the highest living standards the world has ever known. President Trump is trying to destroy that alliance.

At least it’s no longer Trump v. the deep state and the Brits. Trump and the military probably have common ground in not wanting to shed more US soldiers blood in futile conflicts like the Iraq War. On the other hand, the military exists for war and peace per se is alien to them. This contradiction, primordial in an end of empire situation, leads to permanent cold war. However, US national interests demand not just the avoidance of hot war but the positive embrace of the emerging multipolar world order as the context for national reconstruction. Russia and China also must avoid the new cold war option for their own development. That is why they are not content merely to form an eastern block but continue their outreach to America.

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It’s a brave man who predicts any outcome in our increasingly unstable world especially when it concerns the policy of Trump. Yet again we have a Hamlet figure in the White House and we are left to guess whether he really is mad or only pretending to be so. Raimondo shows here a possible method within the Trump madness: certainly it makes sense to have Bolton in the tent pissing out rather than outside the tent pissing in. Furthermore, the debonnaire Tillerson certainly seemed to have played a treacherous role in undermining Trump’s policy of detente with Russia as seems to be confirmed by Trump’s declaration of withdrawal from Syria subsequent to Tilllerson’s departure. Whether you like Trump or not there is no question that he has shaken up US foreign policy in a way that is quite incompatible with a US -led globalization process and, consequently, with a huge portion of the US elite and, even more strikingly, the British elite.

The appointment of John Bolton as President Trump’s National Security Advisor – his third so far – is bad news for anti-interventionists, but hardly the catastrophe #TheResistance is making it out to be. I’ve covered Bolton’s crazed ideology of perpetual conflict in this space on several occasions – you’ll recall he was up for Secretary of State in the first months of the new administration, and he also lost out to H. R. McMaster when Mike Flynn was ousted – and so I won’t repeat myself here. Having made it on the third try, Bolton is now being characterized as the “proof” that Trump has abandoned his “America first” aversion to overseas intervention, as the otherwise sensible Jim Antle avers.

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“We will never know whether Trump actually intended the denouement we have seen, but he has broken the axis between the state department and the Pentagon by introducing Mike Pompey into the equation as his new secretary of state. Pompey is a political associate of the Tea Party movement who can be trusted to ensure that Trump retains the final word on the US foreign policies, especially on Russia.”

Sure enough, Trump does seem to have created some foreign-policy space for himself – he has just announced the withdrawal of US troops from Syria to the horror of the US media.

The surprising part of US President Donald Trump’s move to sack Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is that it took place a full six months after the latter called him a “f***ing moron” at a Pentagon meeting. Tillerson should have thrown in the towel and walked away then. That’s probably what Trump would have preferred.

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This is also an opportunity to turn China-US relations in a positive directions. China has obviously answered Trump’s exhortations to use its influence to resolve the Korea crisis and it may be able to respond to similar exhortations to deal with the US-China trade deficit with the thorny issue of Chinese investment into the USA facilitated by China’s enhanced image.

“The idea is not to keep foreign goods out, but to induce foreign companies to move production here.”,

I also assume that is the idea: otherwise it can only be pure madness. America’s rapid growth towards the end of the 19th century was also the result, not just of tariffs but of inward investment- in that case, from Britain who had decided to outsource the empire after the defeat of the Confederacy in the Civil War. Today, foreign investment provides the key to the reindustrialization of the USA and it is China in particular who can play that role. Prepare to hear Trump ringing out the slogan”The jobs are coming home!”